Relaunching a book: initial consultation
Kathryn contacted me for a consultation on how to make her book more widely available. Published via Amazon, it has strong reviews and Kathryn was selling some via local shops. However, she had used Amazon’s free ISBN meaning all stock had to come via Amazon and her book was not able to access the wider distribution network.
As a publisher based in the UK, I advised Kathryn to purchase her ISBNs from the Nielsen ISBN store, with a bundle of 10 ISBNs being the most cost effective and suitable for her needs. (Each different format of a book needs a different ISBN, so with our plan to relaunch in paperback, ebook and large-print formats, she would need at least 3 ISBNs for this publication.) Before Kathryn registered her account with Nielsen, we discussed a publishing house name, which she would use to help keep her role as publisher clear.
Accessing the book distribution network
Purchasing ISBNs with Nielsen, and maintaining good data about her books via a Nielsen Title Editor account, means Kathryn’s books will be visible on the systems used by booksellers and libraries to select their stock. To enhance the data supplied to retailers about her book, Kathryn also took up a special offer on a Book2Look widget supplied by Nielsen. (Click on the image to view.) This is a look-inside sample that Kathryn can share on social media and her website but is also embedded with the data about her book retailers and libraries looking for books in her categories can browse. We designed a bespoke image for this for Kathryn’s new website.
As Kathryn was going to publish a second edition of her book via Ingram Sparks and Amazon, she tasked me with refreshing the cover and typesetting.
Essential book details
We knew we wanted to reduce the size of the book, as well as the cover price, as Kathryn felt the first edition had been priced a little too high in comparison to competing titles. Kathryn had a number of excellent professional photos with her horse, and we loved the colours and shapes in our final selection for her cover. We refreshed her tagline and made her name and the book’s title more prominent.
We added a simple logo for Kathryn’s publishing house to the spine.
Click to see enlarged
Harnessing data to improve a book’s discoverability online
For the back-cover text, I carried out some SEO research to find out the specific terms readers were searching online to find a book like Kathryn’s. This data, along with Kathryn’s excellent reviews on the first edition, helped me to create some fresh back-cover text. I increased the size of this text and created different ‘layers’ for visual interest and so that a reader is able to pick out the ‘headlines’ before reading the full detail. Key information was added around the bar code: a website, the cover image credit, the availability of an ebook, publisher, the price and the broad category the book belongs to. We also added a small author photo. When Kathryn publishes her next book, we have earmarked a spot next to the author photo to include this book cover.
Inside the book, I picked out some of the praise the book has received and placed this on the opening pages. We added the new publishing house name and website to the copyright page. I increased the font of the typesetting, inserted higher-resolution images and gave a light proofread to tidy up a few matters, including refreshing part titles. Files were prepared for standard print, ebook (initially on Amazon and Kobo) and large-print formats.
Requesting additional Amazon categories to aid book discoverability
I uploaded the fresh edition of the paperback to Amazon, using the SEO data earlier collected for the SEO terms and selecting the two most appropriate categories. Once the book was live on Amazon, I requested 8 additional categories to be added for each format via the contact form within Kathryn’s Amazon account, in order to help more Amazon customers find Kathryn’s book.
Publishing with Ingram Sparks
After viewing a first print copy and making some tweaks until we were happy with the final product, Kathryn opened an account with Ingram Sparks and I uploaded the files there, as well as on Kobo. This step (plus accurate data supplied by Nielsen in using their ISBNs and Title Editor for data housekeeping) allows the access to the distribution network that Kathryn first contacted me about. Her book can now be ordered by a huge number of retailers, at the blanket retailer discount set. Kathryn can also order her own stock from Ingram Sparks for personal use and to sell direct to retailers should she wish to. There is even an option to ship a single copy to a reader within her Ingram Sparks account. (I use this when fulfilling bulk orders for my own books via my website.)
We also created Kathryn a new author website, in time for her first publicity about the relaunch, an article in Horse & Rider magazine.
If you’d like support in publishing or re-publishing your book, contact literary consultant Claire Wingfield
or find out more about Claire Wingfield’s Self-Publishing Assistant Services.